The Lost Girl

The Lost Girl is a Diablo 3 quest first seen and play-tested in the BlizzCon 2009 demo build. It takes place in the desert surface areas of Act II. (Quest title and details are tentative with the game still under construction, and changes may be made before the final release.)

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This quest was one of the more complicated ones in the Blizzcon demo, in terms of the multiple events and actions required to complete it. It was a dark quest, thematically, involving the gruesome deaths of innocents and the betrayal of a people by their chosen leader. This sort of material sets the tone for the dark, despairing plot of Diablo III, where there is much more decline and destruction than redemption, in the land of Sanctuary.

The Lost Girl quest takes place in three locations, and could be triggered by multiple events in various sequences. Players could speak with an NPC in the Enclave of Khamsim and learn of the missing girls, or leap directly into the action of the quest by finding the Dark Cultists engaged in ritual sacrifice.

The girl in the quest title was named Varna. She was found in an area of ruins on the surface of the desert, chained to a stake and surrounded by murderous Dark Cultists. Once the player slaughtered the demons holding her prisoner and freed Varna, she began stumbling to the north while gasping her story.

She explained, while vomiting up great gouts of green poison, that she was the last survivor of many young women from her village, who their leader, Zakarwa had betrayed and sold to the Dark Cultists. The Cultists had ritually sacrified the other girls, in gruesome fashion, and though you appeared to have saved Varna, it was too late and she knew she was going to die. Still, she begged the hero to follow her and to avenge her, and after limping (very slowly, the player had to repeatedly stand still to let her catch up) she finally stopped, shook, screamed, and exploded in a messy blast of green slime.

The second (or third) element of the quest was an encounter with the betraying NPC, Zakarwa. He was found in a section of the desert several screens to one side of Varna's sacrificial altar, near a large tent. (If a player found the tent area before starting the quest, it was deserted.)

If the tent area was found after beginning the quest, whether directly after Varna's death, or later, after returning to the Enclave with the grim news, the action was much the same. Zakarwa was standing near the tent, with a circle of chanting Dark Cultists half a screen away. The Cultists attacked as soon as the player was in their range, and after they died Zakarwa became clickable and instigated a conversation.

There were two possible themes to this encounter, though both ended the same:

If the player had come straight from witnessing Varna's death, Zakarwa was angry and full of despair. He cried out excuses to justify his evil acts; said he'd had to do it or else his town would have been massacred and turned into another Alcarnus, and finally went crazy and tried to run away.

If the player had returned to the Enclave of Khamsim after witnessing Varna's death and spoken to her denial-rich father, Zakarwa was more repentant and depressed. In that dialogue he explained his actions, soon grew remorseful and pathetic, and wound up begging to be put out of his misery.

In both scenarios, killing Zakarwa was the solution. He did not fight back, and usually wound up running in circles, sobbing hysterically. He was an easy kill, taking just a few hits from any character. He seemed to be programmed to always die with a critical hit bonus/animation, and no matter what finished him off, he would explode or be sent flying backwards, leaving a long streak of blood on the ground.

Players had to learn from Varna's dying speech and motion, and continue north. Several screens in that direction, they encountered the Enclave of Khamsim, where several NPCs were located. One of them was identified as Varna's father, and he had two dialogue trees; which one he used depended whether or not the player had already avenged the girl by killing Zakarwa.

In either case, the character sparred no time for sympathy, and came right out and told him his daughter had just died horribly, after being betrayed and sold by Zakarwa.

If the player had not yet killed Zakarwa, the father refused to believe the story. He would insist that his daughter had died weeks before (Zakarwa's cover story) and that Zakarwa was a hero and had saved the village.

If the player had already killed Zakarwa, the father refused to believe that Zakarwa was dead, and refused to believe that he'd sold the girls of the village to the Dark Cultists. (He was in denial either way.)

An early animation of Varna was shown in the blooper reel of the Blizzcon 2009 Character Panel. In the animation she bent over and vmoited the green goo she did during the game, but never stopped, producing an impossible (and very gross) amount of puke, at fire hose velocity.